[E-voting] E-vote success in Nevada may be model

Wed Sep 15 11:59:52 IST 2004

E-vote success in Nevada may be model
Printers, training credited with relatively problem-free vote
Tuesday, September 14, 2004 Posted: 10:19 AM EDT (1419 GMT)

http://beecher.ie/pheed/?zeuooy

CARSON CITY, Nevada (AP) -- Alarmed by software glitches, security threats
and computer crashes with ATM-like voting machines, officials from
Washington, D.C., to California are considering an alternative from an
unlikely place: Nevada.

Silver State voters cast electronic ballots Tuesday on a $9.3 million voting
system with more than 2,600 computers and printers in every county. The
primary was free of serious problems that have embarrassed registrars in
Florida, California, Maryland and other states with touchscreen machines.

"They were incredibly organized," said Marc Carrel, assistant secretary of
state in California, where several counties are preparing to install similar
equipment next year. "I think California could pull off a similar election
if we had adequate training and education programs for poll workers and
voters."

Credit the training in Nevada, and credit the printers -- which give
computer scientists and voter-rights advocates assurances that elections can
be fully audited. As many as 50 million Americans elsewhere will use
paperless touchscreens this November, and critics say hacking,
malfunctioning and other problems in only a few counties could have huge
implications in a tight presidential contest.

On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein co-sponsored legislation that would
force hundreds of counties using touchscreens to install printers by
requiring all voting machines to produce a paper trail by July 2006. An aide
to the California Democrat said Nevada's election marked a turning point in
the contentious debate over touchscreens.

"The Nevada election demonstrates that you can have efficient electronic
voting machines yet at the same time have a paper trail so voters can be
assured they've voted accurately and their vote is being recorded
accurately," Feinstein spokesman Howard Gantman said.

Many registrars oppose paper ballots, insisting that printers -- which cost
about $800 each -- are prone to jamming and too complicated for poll
workers. They require counties to purchase ink and paper, negating key cost
advantages of paperless systems.

Kathy Rogers, the Georgia elections director who monitored voting in Las
Vegas, said printers are not a panacea and could have unintended
consequences: Unethical poll workers could use the printed ballots to
determine how individuals voted.

"We seem to have traded a secret ballot for this piece of paper," said
Rogers, whose state has no plans to abandon paperless touchscreens. "In a
small precinct, it would be easy to sit and observe what order people voted
in."

Few would have predicted that Nevada would become a flash point for voting
technology. Seven of 17 counties used old-fashioned punch card machines in
the previous election.

One poor, isolated county in eastern Nevada, White Pine, had to rent storage
space for the newfangled gizmos; it kept its punch card machines in a cave.
Douglas County is storing touchscreens in the fireproof server farm formerly
rented by Harvey's Casino.

"Nevada shows that maybe, just maybe, government can get things right after
all," Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller joked.

In 16 of 17 counties, every voting terminal includes a small black printer
with a 300-foot roll of paper inside. Registrars will keep the paper for 22
months and randomly select a small percentage of machines to compare printed
records with memory cartridge results.

Nevada's primary wasn't glitch-free. A power outage delayed results in
Pershing County. Clark County had a software glitch that showed vote totals
of zero for all precincts, though countywide numbers were posted on time. A
damaged computer cartridge resulted in lost data and temporarily delayed
results in Nye County.

But those pale compared with problems elsewhere. In 2002, New Mexico's
Bernalillo County drew 48,000 early voters -- but only 36,000 were initially
counted due to a glitch in the software used to tally votes from the
paperless touchscreens. In North Carolina that year, a software bug deleted
436 electronic ballots from six machines in two counties. The machines
erroneously thought their memories were full and stopped counting votes,
even though voters kept casting ballots.

Because of such mishaps, Illinois will require a paper record of every
ballot in 2006. Although most of Illinois' 110 election jurisdictions use
optical scan equipment, two of the largest -- Chicago and the remainder of
Cook County -- are considering touchscreens.

Dianne Felts, director of voting systems and standards for Illinois's
elections board, said Nevada's primary impressed her.

"It heartened everybody here because we were all so worried that the
printers would jam," Felts said. "It seemed to work very well there.
Obviously it can be done elsewhere."

But DeForest B. Soaries Jr., chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance
Commission, questioned whether more populous, diverse counties in other
states can pull off as smooth an election.

Nevada has unique advantages.

Its abundance of retirees generates a big supply of poll workers --
volunteers who complete a three-hour training course and spend the day
setting up equipment and helping voters. By contrast, other states struggle
to recruit and train workers, and some volunteers must speak Spanish,
Vietnamese, Chinese and other languages.

When strapped workers in California's San Diego County couldn't cope with
computer problems in the March primary, 573 of 1,038 polling places failed
to open on time and disenfranchised an unknown number of would-be voters.

Turnout in Tuesday's primary was low to begin with -- roughly a quarter of
registered voters -- and a large number voted beforehand by absentee ballot
or special polls for early voting. Thus, volunteers had time to help
confused voters and quickly replace broken computers.